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Thomas Wolfe must have known there was a Katrina in the future. Despite what you've read or seen on TV, New Orleans is no longer home to most of the victims of the hurricane. As native New Orleaneans trickle back to pick up the pieces of their lives they are finding there is nothing to find. It is just not there anymore.
October's issue of the Urban Spectrum focused on the aftermath of Katrina. We published the words of survivors and displaced evacuees at Lowry. As Lowry was preparing itself as the Denver outpost for hurricane victims, the Urban Spectrum covered the joyful reunion of Linda Nelson and her daughter, Tania Forrest. The two were reunited in Denver with the help of a local Red Cross worker named Albert. Linda had ridden out the storm with two friends in the attic of her home in the Ninth Ward. Their horrifying story was told by Linda, who now lives in Oklahoma with her daughter. She has said from day one, "I'm not going back. There's nothing to go back to."
Even though Linda remembered the shape of her house as she escaped, she still felt compelled to see it and the neighborhood again in the light of a new day.
I called Tania and Linda to set up a follow-up interview. Tania told me it was hard trying to make the adjustment to living with her mother again and that her mother was still shell-shocked. Tania's life has been interrupted, and Linda is desperately trying to start a new one. Susan and Melanie, her two friends, have their story too. Susan relocated to Copperas Cove, Texas, about 40 miles northwest of Austin. Melanie was first transported to Little Rock, then had the opportunity to go to Detroit.
When I reached them by phone, Tania and Linda were standing amid the devastation of the old neighborhood. Linda had to see for herself. Mother and daughter had driven to New Orleans only to realize it was all too true. Tania sounded scared. Wearing masks and gloves, they attempted to sort through the mess Katrina left.
"It's looks like a Wild West movie," Tania said. "You know, where the streets are deserted, and tumbleweeds are blowing across vacant streets." She said the ground was dry and cracked like a desert. But there was still humidity in the air, keeping the mosquitos and bugs swarming around your head. The smell of mold and decay was sickening.
She felt confused saying, "It's just so horrible. I saw a boat where a street car was, and a car on top of a house."
Tania was raised in New Orleans but she didn't recognize it. She observed with wonder, "All the workers are Mexican. It looks to me like there's a whole other city of people to clean up the city."
She also observed the criminal element permeating the city. New Orleans has always been rife with crime from politicians to policemen, but it took Katrina to expose its underbelly to the world. It's not a city of good smells and revelry anymore, it's more like a day in the life of Iraq, said Tania.
"If you watch the six o'clock news that is what New Orleans has become. There are soldiers and Hummers on every corner. It's just like nothing I've ever seen before," she told me.
Tania never did want to venture back into the city that was, but her mother was insistent. She was going back come hell or high water. It wasn't like there was a welcoming party. They couldn't find a motel that had a vacancy.
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They finally found a room in downtown New Orleans. It was a high-end hotel where rooms go for $500 a night. They were charged $300. "And it wasn't even a great room," Tania said.
All vacancies in hotels and apartment buildings today are occupied by workers and policeman's families. The large gambling ship in the harbor is filled to capacity with displaced city employee's families.
Linda seemed resolved when I spoke to her. She looked, picked through, and left with a heavy heart. She had lost everything.
She had two goals when she went back. One, to see for herself what her house and neighborhood looked like. Two, to find and leave New Orleans with something in her hands. What she saw was expected but difficult.
"Seeing the loss and devastation was worse than being in the hurricane," said a matter-of-fact Linda. Like her daughter she compared it to a movie. She said, "Did you ever see Night of the Comets? Louisiana looks scary, horrible. I can't understand how anyone could live there again. It's dead. It's gone. Everything is gray and white. It will never be the same.
"The mayor is wanting people to come back. He's proclaiming that New Orleans will be alive with casinos when the town is cleaned and rebuilt." Linda sniffs at that saying, "He's off his rocker. It will never be the same." She said, "They want us back, but they don't want us back. The Black people have always given New Orleans its unique flavor. How can it be the same when the Blacks aren't coming back? They are the ones who cooked the gumbo. They always cooked. Without them the food will not even be the same."
The little house in the Ninth Ward that protected three women for four life threatening days was still standing when Linda and Tania found their way to the old neighborhood. The front steps were at the house next door. The refrigerator was in the living room and the house was completely destroyed. Linda said it looked like someone had come in and torn and thrown everything around. Feather pillows were torn and scattered. Clothes were thrown and furniture was overturned. She doesn't know what happened to her animals, but suspects and hopes someone rescued them.
They sifted through the mess and both said, "We didn't even want to touch anything." The mold was everywhere. The smell and bugs were overpowering. When they left they threw away the clothes they were wearing.
Linda found some plastic containers in the attic that were salvageable. She confiscated one of the items she was looking for, her daughter's time-capsule and some hats that were worn by her great-great-grandmother. She hoped to find the plague that read, "The World's Greatest Mother." "But," she sighed, "it floated away."
I talked with Linda and Tania after they returned to Oklahoma. Linda had gotten lost when she was at the wheel. She took a random detour because she wanted to. Tania was aggravated. What should have taken eight hours took 10. Linda said, "I just wanted to see new places, I want to see pretty now." I could hear Tania's eyes roll. The mother/daughter thing never ends, even when disaster brings the two together again.
For now Linda is over New Orleans. Or so she says. The trip brought back the reality that she will not return. Her life is in Oklahoma now.
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